


In Sin and Error Pining

by RedRowan



Series: La Belle Dame Sans Merci [6]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Christmas, F/M, Female Matt Murdock, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, Post-Season/Series 01, Resurrection, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 04:32:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17135024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRowan/pseuds/RedRowan
Summary: It's a Christmas miracle, having Red back from the dead.  Frank doesn't believe in miracles.





	In Sin and Error Pining

**Author's Note:**

> This started as my post-Daredevil cancellation sadness, but then I realized that it needed to be a Christmas fic. So Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate it, and Happy Holidays to those of you who don't.

Frank watches Red’s every move.

He watches her sit in the booth in this cheap-ass diner. He watches her fidget with the cutlery, turn the coffee cup in her hands. She sips. Frank doesn’t touch his coffee.

She looks tiny, wrapped in a too-large army-green jacket that’s seen better days. She moves without the certainty he remembers, and she looks like he could snap her in half.

He knows better than that. He knows that Mattie Murdock is at her most dangerous when she appears fragile; she’s still a bird of prey, even when her bones are hollow.

“I -“ she starts.

“What the hell happened?” Frank says.

She shrugs, shaking her head.

“The building fell,” she says. She doesn’t seem about to elaborate.

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit, Red.”

“I don’t. I…remember pieces, I think. Or maybe I imagined them.” She takes a sip of coffee. “Really, the next thing I remember is waking up at St Agnes -“

“Yeah, and when was that?”

He can see her jaw tighten in annoyance. Good.

“A while ago,” she says.

“How long? A few days later? Few weeks?”

“I don’t -“

“You let me think you were dead,” he growls.

“What was I going to do, ask a nun to go find the Punisher for me? I don’t exactly have your number memorized.”

He exhales, defeated. He hadn’t thought of that. She takes a sip of coffee, and he notices that her hand is trembling, ever so slightly.

“I was coming to find Curtis,” she says, putting the cup down. “I didn’t know you’d be there. I didn’t know how to find you, but you’d mentioned where he worked, and I thought he might know. And he might help…tell you.” She turns the cup on its saucer. “I didn’t mean for it to go like this.”

He looks at her, all the questions in his head jumbled up and ready to be spat out. _Why did you leave me? Why did you choose her? Did you love Elektra more than me?_

Instead, he asks, “Does Karen know? Foggy?”

She shakes her head. “They’re better off without me.”

“Jesus, Red -“

“It’s true. As Mattie Murdock, all I could do was fuck up their lives. I have - I have to leave that behind.”

_You were always a sanctimonious bitch_ , whispers a voice in the back of his head.

“So why’d you come looking for me?” he says.

The corner of her mouth tilts up, just a little, and he sees his Red for the first time that night, back from the dead.

“You were never part of Mattie Murdock’s life,” she says.

He sits back, crossing his arms.

“So this is about Daredevil,” he says. He still thinks the name is ridiculous.

“I need your help, Frank. To get me back on my feet.” She grins, but it’s not convincing. “You always did bring out the best in me.”

He bites down the comment that she should ask Elektra to bring out the best in her.

“What about your buddies?” he says.

“Buddies?”

“You know, Hero of Harlem, kid with the glowing fist, girl with the sword?”

Her mouth forms a little O, and she nods.

“Yeah, them.” She sighs. “They fought next to Daredevil, but they _liked _Mattie Murdock. They’d want her back, too.”__

____

He looks at his coffee. Probably lukewarm, now.

“I know you’re angry,” she continues. “I know we can’t…just go back. Pick up where we left off. And I’m sorry for that.” Her fingertips twitch, like they want to reach out. “But you’re the only one who can give me what I need.”

_More than Elektra?_

He bites it down. “What do you need?”

What she needs is a sparring partner. Someone who won’t balk at hitting a blind woman. And Frank is aching, even just looking at her, and he can’t stand the thought of her walking away again.

So he says yes. He lets her climb into the passenger side of the van, and they drive in silence.

“Say it,” she says, breaking first.

“What?”

“Whatever you’re trying not to say.”

There’s a lot that he’s trying not to say. He settles on one of the safer thoughts.

“What happened to her?” he says.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly. “Father Lantom says no-one else got out the way I did, but…I think the only way I could have made it is if she got me out. She wasn’t…entirely human, at the end.”

“She’s still out there?”

“Yeah. I mean, I hope so.”

_Of course you do._

Frank parks across the street from the church Red directed him to. The main doors are wide open, warm and inviting, and people are milling around in front of the church, but Red leads him around the crowd to a side entrance. There’s no light over the door, so no-one can see them as Red pulls out a key and lets them in. Frank feels the temperature drop as he follows her down the stairs into the basement, stone leaching away the body heat of the congregation. He looks around the basement - storage, statues, and sarcophagi.

“You’ve been staying here?” he says. _Typical, choirgirl._

“Not for long,” she says. “I was at the orphanage across the street until about a week ago.” She shrugs, tilting her head. “Had to kick me out.”

Frank tries to assess whether this is worse than David’s bunker. At least they’d had a kitchen and a shower.

“So what now?” he says.

She tucks her glasses into a pocket and shrugs out of her jacket, tossing it over the end of the camp bed in the corner.

“There should be wraps on the shelf.” She gestures toward the sink, and the small shelves next to it. Frank can see two pairs of wraps rolled up on the shelf. Red starts shoving furniture out of the way, clearing a space in front of the stairs, while Frank takes off his jacket and shoes and starts wrapping his hands. When she’s done, she takes off her shoes, and he pauses to toss her a wrap, and she fumbles the catch.

He’s never seen her fumble, not when she wasn’t pretending.

She’s not pretending.

“Red -“

“I’m fine.” She starts wrapping her right hand. When she’s done, she cocks her head, and Frank tosses her the second one. She snatches it out of the air, her chin raised.

“Who got you these?” Frank says.

“Sister Maggie. She’s the one letting me stay here.”

“She know who you are?”

Red nods. “Kind of hard to hide it when they found me in the suit.”

“Always said the secret identity thing was bullshit.”

“Maybe. Not really planning on keeping it.” She holds out her wrapped hands, offering her knuckles. Frank steps into the open space and bumps her knuckles with his own; it’s a familiar gesture, they’ve done it more times than he can count, and part of him wants to break down and cry because he never thought he’d be able to do it with her again.

She attacks first. She always does. Frank pulls his punches, afraid to hurt her, and still gets in a few strikes, more than he should.

“Stop bullshitting, Frank,” she snarls, after he’s gotten in a soft kick to her body.

He doesn’t listen to her, and it makes her angrier, until he’s on the defensive, just blocking against her fury.

“What do you want, Red?” he says as she disengages.

“I want you to stop fucking around!”

“I’m not going to break you.”

“You can’t break me, Frank. You already tried.” She takes a swing at him, a huge haymaker that he dodges easily.

He jabs at her ribs. She spins and kicks, and her foot lands in his gut, knocking the wind out of him. She punches him across the face, sending him to the floor, but he sweeps out with his leg, taking her down with him. They grapple on the floor, bodies intertwining with their old intimacy, and it hurts more than any of the blows she lands. He fights back, but she has the upper hand, now, and she wraps her thighs around his throat in a chokehold that he knows he’d have to kill her to get out of.

He taps out, and she rolls off him onto her back. They lie there, side by side, panting as if they’d just fucked.

“I _missed_ you,” she breathes.

Surprised, he looks over at her. There’s a tear trickling down from her eye toward her ear. He reaches out and puts his hand over hers, feeling the warmth against his fingertips. He looks away, up at the ceiling.

“That why you came after me?” he says.

“That.” Her hand turns under his until they’re palm to palm, and she threads her fingers through his. “And you’re the only person who never wanted me to be something I’m not. And I need that right now.”

“What about Elektra?” It comes out, this time.

“She got closer than most.” She pauses, listening, and he wishes he could slow his heart down. “Frank -“

“Forget it.”

She’s already rolling onto her side to face him. “I was trying to save her -“

“It doesn’t matter, Red -“

“It does -“

“You loved her.”

Red stops, a little furrow between her eyebrows.

“You loved her,” Frank repeats. “I know.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I loved her. I still do. Just like I love you.”

It hurts, hearing her say that. It hurts more than a bullet, more than any torture Rawlins could have dreamt up, more than his certainty that she’d loved Elektra more.

“You chose her,” he says, and he wishes it didn’t sound like pleading.

She shakes her head.

“She’d died saving my life, I couldn’t leave her there.” She reaches across with her free hand, her fingertips against his cheek. “I tried so hard to come back to you. Maybe that’s why I did.”

He leans against her touch.

“I love you,” she whispers.

He wants to run. He wants to shake her. But more than anything, he wants to give in to the warmth running from his throat to his gut.

It’s not often that people like them get a chance to get what they want.

He leans up and kisses her. He rolls them so that she’s on her back, his hand cushioning her head against the stone floor. He breaks the kiss, resting his forehead against hers.

“I missed you so much,” he says, the words tumbling from his lips to hers.

She reaches up and wraps her arm around his shoulders, pulling him down on top of her. Her hands slide under his shirt and up his back, pulling it off.

“Hang on,” he says, grinning as he sits back. He starts unwrapping his hands as fast as he can.

“Oh yeah…” she says absently. She rolls to her feet, unwrapping as she goes, and brushes her hand over his face as she walks past him. “When’d that get broken again?” she says, on her way to the bed.

“What?”

“Your nose.”

“Oh. Last month?”

She sits on the bed, tossing her wraps on the shelf next to it, and he goes to her, standing over her.

“Number fourteen?” she says.

“Yeah.” He leans down to kiss her, pushing her back. The sheets are cheap industrial cotton; she must hate them. But at least it’s more comfortable than the floor - he’s too old for that to have any appeal. He pulls her top and bra off, kissing her breasts and scars.

“Aw, shit.”

He stops.

“What?” he says, imagining a priest or a nun coming down the stairs.

“I don’t exactly have any condoms. Unless you’ve got one in your wallet?” She arches her eyebrows hopefully.

“Yeah, haven’t done that since I was eighteen.”

“Damn.”

“It’s OK.” He grins, and unbuckles her belt, kissing her where he pulls her pants down. “I got you, Red.” She’s naked, now, and he puts his hands on her thighs and spreads them. He slides down into the space between them, and presses two fingers inside her as he works his tongue on her clit. She moans, muffled, and he glances up to see her face turned to the side, her hand pressing the pillow up against her mouth.

Well, _challenge accepted_.

He sucks her clit between his teeth, and she gasps and cries out, only half-succeeding in muffling it. He grins and kisses the inside of her thigh.

“Asshole,” she growls.

“Uh-uh, we said no rim jobs.”

“God, you’re such a dork -“

He cuts her off with a thrust of his fingers, and she moans as she grab the pillow tighter in her hand. He buries his face between her legs, feeling them tremble as he pushes her closer and closer to the edge, and then her body shudders and tightens as she comes.

He wipes his face on the sheet and crawls up the bed to put his arms around her. There are tears on her face, so he presses his lips over them. She turns so she’s on her side, and kisses him, her tongue gently sliding against his. Then her leg wraps over his, and she shifts on top of him. He brushes her hair away from their faces, and feels her smile against his lips. Then she’s moving down, her lips against his jaw, his throat, over his chest. He bunches the pillow up under his head so he can watch her. She gets his pants and underwear off in one go, and she grins.

She could break his heart. She already did.

He watches her as she sucks him off, determined not to give her the satisfaction of making any noise. He loses that one, when she slides a finger behind his balls and rubs that spot the way she always knows how. She pulls off for a moment, and licks at the tip of his cock, as smug as a cat. He chuckles and grabs a handful of her hair, pushing her back down, but she keeps her finger there, and he can’t help groaning as he exhales.

It’s been too damn long since they’ve been together, so it doesn’t take him long to come in her mouth. He lies sprawled on the bed, and thinks vaguely that he should probably still be worried about priests and nuns walking in on them, but can’t bring himself to care. She rinses her mouth in the sink, and crawls back into the bed, pulling the sheet and the thin blanket over them. She’s warm and soft, pressed against his side with her head on his chest.

“I love you,” he says, trying the words.

“I love you, too,” she says.

The sound of singing drifts down from above them. Red sits up, her head tilted toward the ceiling.

“Mass?” he says.

She shakes her head. “The carol service before.”

He puts his hand on her back.

“You want to go up?”

“No.” She settles back down. Her hand is resting on his chest, just under her chin, and he clasps it, holding it over his heart. “I just want to listen.”

Frank closes his eyes, and listens.

_O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,_  
_It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth._  
_Long lay the world in sin and error pining,_  
_Till He appear'd and the soul felt its worth._  
_A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,_  
_For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn._

_Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!_  
_O night divine, O night when Christ was born;_  
_O night divine, O night, O night divine._

“Merry Christmas, Red.”

“Merry Christmas, Frank.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr is circling the drain, but I can still be found at blog-redrowan.tumblr.com.


End file.
